(Picture by The Mirror)
Spooky Season is amongst us! And with this part of the year being filled with tricks, treats and trauma, I thought what would be better for a Halloween inspired list than taking a deep and probably worrying dive into my psyche and figuring out where a lot of this trauma stems from. Whether it comes from films, video games, real life experiences or just certain sounds, these 10 things cut deeper in my soul than any Freddie Kruger or Jason Vorhees can ever dream of inflicting. Some of these are incredibly specific and niche so I will try and include as many of these things in their original form as possible or with a link attached so that at least you can share my childhood trauma with me. With all of that in the books, let’s get into the list so you can all judge me and my sensitive soul.
‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’ Show Ending Sound https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MForOVuA6hs(55:16-55:21)
In all honesty I imagine this one isn’t as niche as some of the others in this list, with a quick scan on Twitter confirming the widespread trauma that Chris Tarrant’s gameshow in the early 2000’s had inflicted on us as poor, young children. This noise stems from the very plains of hell itself and is enough to make even the strongest men tremble with fear. This in combination with the already spooky lighting and other quite ominous sounds throughout the show was enough to send me sprinting from the tv at the end of one of the shows. This didn’t happen every show, but when it did – oh boy was I scared. Just listen to this satanic screech and tell me this isn’t something that will traumatise a young child for the rest of their lives. Even finding this sound for this list sent shivers up and down my arms again, a full almost 16 or so years later. Listening the entire soundtrack of this show had me more anxious and sweating than I would like to admit, a truly terrifying list of sounds on an already quite intimidating set results in buried trauma that still dwells to this very day.
Dogs (just in general)
Yep, that’s right. As a child I was incredibly afraid of dogs. It was at a point where I would run away or do anything I could to avoid seeing a dog when I was out and about, (and of course, running away from a dog makes them think you are playing with them so that made things ten times worse for little me). This trauma started via my neighbour who had two black Labradors, she was on a walk with them and knocked onto our house to ask for something, I was at the door with my mum and one of the dogs jumped at me and that sent me sprinting into the house to hide from my new number one fear. I screamed in hysterics as I hid behind the sofa, and this stayed ingrained in my mind for a very long time and prevented me from going outside much without the fear of a dog running up and attacking me or knocking me over. Eventually I grew out of this fear, but I still feel a little bit uncomfortable when there are big dogs around me or around very energetic dogs, but the impact that these little bundles of fluff had on my childhood cannot be overstated. Again, I imagine this fear isn’t exclusive to me by any stretch, but it probably shouldn’t have had as much of an impact on my young life as it eventually did.
‘Chicken Run’ PS1 Game Over Screen
I love Chicken Run now as an adult. An absolute classic from Aardman Animations in the year 2000, with a farm of chickens attempting to escape after learning that their fate is to be turned into chicken pies. This then obviously resulted in a movie-tie in game for the PlayStation which was surprisingly good and surprisingly scary for a kid’s game. I remember having the demo for this game on one of those demo discs that Sony distributed in magazines or McDonalds Happy Meals, (simpler times) and this was a game I was always terrified to play because of this scene where you would be captured by either one of the guard dogs, Mr. Tweedy or Mrs. Tweedy. This game was a stealth action/adventure game, almost like a kid’s version of Metal Gear Solid, but even more terrifying. The screen would go black with their completely horrifying PS1 models of their characters over the screen and the most goosebump inducing music that could probably be gotten away with for a children’s PS1 game. The one in particular that got me the most scared was the dog game over screen for obvious reasons as stated before, with a young Dave’s terror for canines only being accelerated by this terrifying screen in a video game. Having watched it back again for this video I am still not going to blame my younger self for being terrified of this as this is extreme, I’d say for a kid’s game, but the memories I had of it in my head were a little bit scarier. Slightly more niche of a terror than the other entries so far, but a pretty understandable one from the viewpoint of a small child.
‘Nintendogs’ Contest Fail Sound
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgGbDi5zpoU (1:08-1:12)
This one is a bit ironic considering I was very afraid of dogs at the time, but I digress, the charm of Nintendogs was too much for even me to withstand as a child. It must have been the fact that in the game I was this almost dog overlord, with the ability to train my dogs without the ingrained fear of them jumping up at me in real life. Apart from feeding, playing and walking your dogs, one of the key components of the game was to train your dog to compete in competitions, the frisbee contest, an agility contest, and the obedience trial. The obedience trial is the setting of this terrifying tale of my childhood for this occasion, with little me not understanding fully how to get the dogs to obey your commands and teach them new tricks. You must get the dog into a certain position, like sit, and then speak the command “sit” to them repeatedly for them to get it. Looking back this must have brought my parents to the brink of insanity hearing me and my sister shouting “LIE DOWN” over and over again whenever we would play the game. In the contests, my dog would do its’ utmost to disobey me and do whatever it wanted to do, and when that timer counts down to zero and the tricks displayed have not been shown, this very over the top and terrifying sound would bellow throughout the entire contest hall. Nintendo why? Why make the sound THAT scary? Why not a simple buzzer? A sad little trombone sound would have been more appropriate, not this anxiety inducing series of screeches that made me immediately turn my Nintendo DS off and take the cartridge out of it.
The Champions League Theme Tune
I was chatting with my mum whilst I was making this list to see if she could recall anything that I may have been too young to remember, and she can recall me bolting out of the room anytime the Champions League theme tune came on the TV. Wow. Being a Manchester United fan, this fear will absolutely stick with me until the end of my days, with the last few years bringing me significant pain watching us in Europe’s elite competition for the most part. (I always preferred the Europa League theme tune anyway).
E.T The Ride at Universal Studios
This little guy has always given me the creeps. I still don’t really know exactly what part of the completely innocent and family friendly ride at Universal Studios Florida had me in tears and hysterics as a child, but I always remembered the ride very vividly after that experience and this was a fear that I later conquered in my life on my return to Florida around two years ago. I remember one worker there in particular that, bless her, tried to comfort me and my screaming just before going on the ride, but she had a puppet of E.T on her hand and thought that waving it excessively in my face was going to be the key to stopping my screaming, only for it to be intensified even more afterwards. I wonder if that worked for any other kids or if I was just a special case where the extra-terrestrial made a child cry even more. The ride takes you through a speed run of the plot of E.T, with you riding on these bikes with E.T in the front basket to get the little guy back home. This is done in quite a dark room with the famous music from the film bellowing throughout the duration of the ride, and the cherry on the top that made me continue wailing even more came after the ride. After the ride, E.T thanks everyone personally for helping get him back home, even saying your name (which you enter before the ride, but little Dave did not know this) and this was game over for me. How did this alien know my name? I cried louder than at the start of the ride and that was the end of one of the most traumatic rides of my life. Later, I returned to this ride at the ripe age of 20 and I was determined to conquer my fear. Immediately I was reminded by my family of my crippling fear of E.T and was reassured that if I wanted to cry nobody would judge me for it, very funny guys. But I’ll let you know that I didn’t cry once on the ride again. I had beaten my fear and I could finally sleep easily knowing a part of my life that had haunted me for so long had been laid to rest.
Avast Anti-Virus Sound
I want you to paint this scenario in your head so that you can understand the extent of the trauma that this sound caused me as a child. Imagine this – you are around 6/7 years old, and you are a huge Pokémon fan. Pokémon Emerald has just released and life is good. You want to play Pokémon in any way, shape or form possible, whether it is on the Gameboy Advance, the official Pokémon website with all the flash games and quizzes, or the option that is more pertinent to this story, an online MMORPG. Enter, Pokémon Crater. I was glued to this as a child, a way to play and catch any Pokémon that your heart desires, with the ability to trade and battle with random people online. This was WAY before online play on consoles and handhelds was a common practice, so you can imagine the excitement when I found this haven where I could play to my hearts content. Then one day, my life changed forever. My dad had gotten new anti-virus software on the family computer, and this software was particularly distrusting of my new favourite website. Whenever I would load this website now, the anti-virus software would blare out an excessively loud siren noise that would send my dad sprinting down the stairs to see how I had managed to nearly break the computer this time. The fear I would feel whenever this sound came on was immense, maybe not the sound as much scaring me, but the thought of my dad running down the stairs and kicking me off the computer before I could play my favourite game. (But of course, the incredibly loud siren didn’t help). This happened every time I would load the website up so due to the crippling fear, I had to transition to another website instead, but that fear will stay with me forever.
This weird blob monster in Blinx – The Time Sweeper
I feel like I don’t hear enough people talking about this game anymore, this classic on the original Xbox was one of the first games I remember playing after I got my Xbox when I was around 5 years old. This game and Jet Set Radio Future. Simpler times. You play as this little cute cat that works as a ‘Time Sweeper’, someone that supplies time to different worlds and dimensions, (you just happen to be an adorable feline at the same time). The monsters in this game are already pretty creepy, with a mix of blobs and terrifying faces that never change. But there was one monster in particular that stuck with me throughout my childhood, and it was this mini boss at the end of ‘Stage 4 Level 1’. Whenever I would get to this specific part of the level, I would avoid this monstrosity for all my life, so I would quit the level and be stuck there for the rest of time (pardon the pun). It was just the way it was so much bigger than the other monsters in the level and that it would slowly stumble towards you that just made young Dave terrified. A particular highlight of my life so far was returning to this game and beating this monster that had marred my childhood for so long, it took courage and determination to best this fiend, but I conquered my fear. Only to get stuck on a level a few stages later. Maybe one day I will return and conquer that level too and finally finish a really cool game.
The Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney World
Another tale from the trauma caused at a theme park. My mum never lets me forget the famous quote I was saying throughout the like 7 minutes that this ride lasts for, that “I don’t like pirates” followed by a chorus of wailing and crying as my mind flashes back to the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney World Florida. Like the trauma I suffered at the hands of E.T, this is another case of a ride scaring the living life out of me for seemingly no reason and it being another way for my family to mock and shame me. In all fairness to the small child that I was, the start of the ride has a sudden drop that comes out of nowhere and only escalated the fear I was already building and made me cry for the duration of the whole ride. Again, I don’t really know what set me off before the ride started, I hadn’t seen the films, I don’t think I had any inherent issue with pirates in my childhood before this, but on this day, I apparently decided that today would be the day I did have an issue, and oh boy did I have an issue. It could have been due to the animatronics on display that recreated scenes in the film and how long I had to endure this terror for. In a similar fashion to my conquering of E.T, my return to Florida allowed me to put another demon to rest, (I’m starting to think my family went back purely for me to go on this spiritual quest to defeat my past fears). The ride just turned out to be more boring than scary, with the initial drop being quite fun, but then just a slow boat ride like “It’s a Small Small World”, but with pirates. I came out with a chest puffed and confidence sky-high after besting another childhood fear.
Barney the Dinosaur
I blame my mum entirely for this one. One of my earliest memories is my mum taking me to a Barney the Dinosaur live show, (I don’t really understand why Barney deserved an entire tour of live shows, but there must have been a high demand for everyone’s favourite purple dinosaur). Alas, I attended one of these shows and was subjected to even more torture at the hands of my parents. I remember the set quite vividly as it resembled the TV show, an outside play area with a sort of roundabout chair contraption in the middle of the stage and lurking in the wings was the harbinger of terror and suffering himself. When Barney came on stage I burst into tears and screams (if you couldn’t tell from every other entry on this list, I was a very sensitive kid growing up) and had to be taken out to the foyer by my heartless mother that subjected me to this abuse. This was earlier in my timeline than the escapades at Disney and Universal, but you’d have thought my mother would have learnt from this experience to stop bringing me to things that had even the slightest risk of making me cry. This also happened when I was taken to see Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban at the cinema, a surprisingly dark film for a franchise that was initially built on the wonder of magic and witchcraft amongst children. Going back to Barney before I get side-tracked by my mother’s poor decision-making skills in hindsight, I think it was the towering presence that Barney had on the stage that must have had me quaking in this instance, and how his voice boomed throughout the arena. On TV, fine. I can deal with that. But in the flesh, nope.
So that was a very open and honest (and probably concerning) trip into the depth of my childhood as you can all see the trauma that was inflicted in my childhood and how it has shaped me into the man I am today. I wonder if any other people have experienced similarly pathetic things that scarred them in their formative years, maybe there is something more terrifying to a child than a game over screen, a purple dinosaur, and a Labrador. Only you in the comments of this post can help me feel less bad about my fears by sharing some of yours. I hope you all have a great Halloween and that you don’t encounter anything as truly terrifying as the things in this list.
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